Chatelaine, a long-running Canadian women’s general interest magazine, was founded in 1928 under Maclean Publishing, the same media giant that ran Canadian Homes and Gardens, among other magazines. The magazine’s name, which was suggested by a reader in a contest, refers to the ring of keys that a housewife would keep chained to her belt in turn-of-the-century households. Helmed by outspoken feminist editor Doris Anderson from 1957 to 1977, Chatelaine is notable for being a strong voice of early second-wave feminism in conservative Canada. The magazine, and its French language counterpart Châtelaine, has only recently struggled with circulation numbers in the era of declining print, and is currently published bimonthly.

This issue comes courtesy of one excellent Rex Reilly, who furnished me with many excellent vintage Canadian periodicals for Giftmas. Thanks again Rex!

Oh, kids…you’ve got a long way to go.

“Yep, I sure am drowning.”

Doris Anderson sounds like a pretty cool lady, doesn’t she? I wish she was better known in America.

Sucaryl (sodium cyclamate) was banned in the United States in 1970 because it gave lab rats bladder cancer. Whee! It is still used as a sweetener in 130 countries.

Every woman dead, on the other hand, wants Dior.

Canada, this is why America makes fun of you. Sometimes you just make it so easy. That’s not even a cohesive sandwich, it’s just a pile of increasingly unappealing and random (oranges, onions, and baloney??) sandwiches stacked on top of each other.

I see she’s rocking the “sea nymph” hairdo from last week’s American Girl.

If a tampon inspires you to tie a sheet around your neck and twirl around on the beach, a la Whatever Happened To Baby Jane, maybe consider switching to pads.

The Duke Reabdicates: “He reabdicated” Is cracking me up.

I couldn’t find anything on Gary Smith (having an extraordinarily generic name didn’t help), so I’m presuming that he didn’t get far as “Canada’s Woody Allen”. Methinks he dodged a bullet there.

“Traditionally lovely, always in good taste”

I like that red couch, but that chair next to it just looks like a murder scene.

I only know Alan Bates as Claudius from the 1990 Mel Gibson version of Hamlet, so it’s nice to see him young and mod. He’s cute in kind of a Terry Jones way. The interviewer certainly likes him.

Note his expert swerve away from the gentle needling about who may be shacking up in Alan’s farmhouse. Per Wikipedia, “Even after homosexuality was partially decriminalized in Britain in 1967, Bates rigorously avoided interviews and questions about his personal life, and even denied to his male lovers that there was a homosexual component in his nature.”

“We understand that it’s your national duty to uphold the stereotype of the polite and non-confrontational Canadian, but what if you really tap into the blinding rage that you experience when making your bed with badly fitted bedsheets, eh? Doesn’t that make you positively livid? Good, very good. Now take that feeling and project it onto the next helpless sales associate that you encounter.”

Could they not figure out anything that rhymed with “blonde”?

Pam took twenty minutes to become a stunning blonde/
“That’s My Color!” cried all three “like one dredged up from a pond!”

Hmm, maybe I shouldn’t be in charge of this.

Badass women of Saskatchewan!

I don’t know what happened to these women, but I hope they all went on to have good and happy lives.

Dr. Steele seems pretty amazing, and she even wrote an autobiography of her medical adventures.

More badass women of Canada! Except for some reason the header copy defaults to male pronouns! That’s weird!

Onto some excellent mod fashion. These clothes were all available as sewing patterns, which is probably why a big handful of pages in this section were all torn out – I’m guessing they were references for whoever had this magazine first. They’re advertising it as a $500 wardrobe for $185, presuming you do all your own sewing. Lots of tips for re-using elements of the same outfit in different ways. I love this girl’s dagger-tipped manicure. Interrupt her note-taking again and she’ll scratch your eyes out.

“He can carry his own damn lunch.”

I’m not sure if I’m a fan of the big under-the-chin ribbon going up the side of her hat, but maybe Canada is very windy?

This photo appears to have been taken from the perspective of a squirrel hiding in a tree.

Ok, I like the hat-strap better at that angle. I approve! Big old grosgrain ribbons for all! This model is rather fabulous, isn’t she?

Are you over your cute little pillbox hat? Put some weird cage-thing over it and bam, just like new! I do quite like that blue coat, even though I don’t see what they’re talking about with the big beaded buttons. Maybe there was another picture that showed it better.

Picture 5 was taken by the ghost who haunts the chandelier.

1967: the year that everyone forgot how sandwiches work.

Pardon me, boys, my tam-o-shanter is up here!

Apparently they also forgot how hot dogs work in 1967.

Which of these literal children are being groomed for Prince Charles?

Shame it didn’t work out with Anne and the crown prince (current king) of Sweden – they would have made some good looking kids. I think Chatelaine is most broken up about the Earl of Caithness falling through, since is the ancestral lord of Nova Scotia.

In looking up whatever came of the Nevill girls and Marilyn Wills, their sparsely associated Wikipedia pages proudly point out that Rose Nevill and Marilyn were both bridesmaids in Princess Margaret’s wedding in 1960. They would have both been around ten. Imagine your legacy being defined at the age of ten because you got to be part of a princess’s ginormous wedding.

Marilyn Wills died from cancer in 1970, at the age of 22. Bummer, she seemed fun from this article.

All of Charles’s college friends had to be approved by his 36 year old personal assistant first. Sheesh.

As for the Prince of Hanover (not the one who married Princess Caroline), he joined a Rajneesh cult in 1969 and died in 1981 while doing karate.

Princess Anne did, however, meet her future ex husband in 1968, and they were miserable together for the next twenty five years.

Dig those purple fishnets!

I was going to roll my eyes at the “California Dip”, but…yeah, ok, that is literally my family’s onion dip recipe. It ain’t Super Bowl Sunday until we’ve got it on the table. But keep tuna the hell out of it!

”Fill egg whites lavishly” is today’s positive affirmation.

MOTHER, THE FLOWER OF MY YOUTH IS WILTING

“The special problems of growing up”, Jesus Christ.

It’s a bedsheet! it’s a wallpaper! It’s an evening gown! It’s a restraining device!

I love this design.

Come to Quebec and visit our gros fromage!

Canada, if you need help with your sandwich making you can just ask, it’s okay. Now put that can of Spam, I mean Prem, back on the shelf.

STOP PUTTING ORANGE SLICES ON YOUR SANDWICHES!!

Is it just me, or are those menus kind of…a lot? I’m not the healthiest person, but I also don’t eat dessert every day —

— Oh.

You’re really worrying me here, Canada…

“ARTHUR, COME QUICK! SHE’S BACK!”
“Pam, for the last time, there’s no — my GOD! There really IS the apparition of a judgmental socialite in the Celanese Carpet! And she looks like she’s about to say something disapproving and backhanded! Speak, spirit!”
“Why, Pamela, that dress looks so much better on you than it did on my great-aunt Bettina thirty years ago.”

There’s a teen girl version of this magazine?! Give it to me NOW!

Stephanie Mcluhan, the daughter of “The medium is the message” philosopher Marshall Mcluhan, grew up to edit a book of her father’s works called Understanding Me, so it seems like she has spent an awful lot of time trying to “understand Daddy”.

For historical context, the 1967 World’s Fair, or Expo 67, was held in Montreal from April to October, and is considered the most successful World’s Fair of all time. It also coincided with the Canadian Centennial, so everyone was all-a-twitter in trying to go see it. Hence this article, which is helpful in its progressive femme-forward tone but also for WHO CARES IF YOUR HUSBAND DOESN’T WANT TO GO, JUST GO!

You can brighten up anything with RIT, as long as it’s a lurid bubblegum pink, apparently.

What I’m getting from this is that the housewives of Canada are alright with mental hospitals and reserved about famous psychiatrists with sexist opinions, but you mess with Jesus and your ass is cancelled.

That centennial flag dress is ADORABLE.

So far this beef is perfect, until you do something terrible like put it on an upside-down hamburger bun with some peanut butter and orange slices and canned sardines and then call it a sandwich. I’M ONTO YOU!

The ice cream float was invented approximately a century before this ad, but don’t tell them that.

 

That’s it for this week! Thank you as always for reading. Next time we’ll be looking at France, an English-language French tourism magazine from 1988!